


The gift without the giver is bare

by middlemarch



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Books, F/M, Flowers, Music, Romance, gift-giving, if gift-giving was Jyn's preferred love language, what might have been, world-building via tiny details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12231225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Five gifts Jyn never gave Cassian. And one she did.





	The gift without the giver is bare

1\. She watched his throat as he swallowed the lukewarm caf and she thought of the bottle of Festian snow-wine Saw had once passed around, how it had been so icy and not so sweet and how Berthe, Saw’s best pilot, had taken the sleek glass neck from Jyn’s hand and said,

“Careful. It’s not meant for off-worlders, girl.”

She would have given him that.

 

2\. Baze, it was Baze and shockingly not Chirrut, Baze talked about a rare flower, called a desert iris, that had a fragrance that could tempt a Jedi knight into sin, whose petals were softer than the crease of a beloved’s thigh. It grew in the short season than came after the Hoth winter, before the next Hoth winter, and the nectar burst on the tongue like a supernova.

She would have given him that.

3\. Bodhi could not leave the Imps behind and he talked about the holo-dramas they all watched in their barracks, how the heroine who was also a spy always disrobed, revealing the most filmy, lacy, embroidered undergarments, a shimmering tattoo at the small of her back. Jyn had a scar there, from some incident she could not longer recall, and she had the most serviceable, grey underwear the galaxy could issue but she would have spent the chits to get a matching set in indigo colored Naboo eel-silk and a candle, so she could see his face when she looked over her bare shoulder when she felt the silk falling, so slowly, to the ground.

She would have given him that.

4\. In an garret apartment she’d had for all of four months, under the floorboards beside the bed, she’d left some treasures she hadn’t had time to retrieve; there was a book of maps, planet-side and parsecs, nebulae and asteroid belts, much annotated, by Jyn herself and all the previous, unnamed owners. She’d been given it by a partisan on a transport, someone who had seen something in her, and she hadn’t forgotten the look in the man’s eyes, that had nothing of lust but a certain warming recognition. Someone had calligraphied a fragment of verse written by Jobal Naberrie and that was the page she would have turned to when she gave it to Cassian, letting her finger direct his eyes to words she wished she could whisper.

She would have, she wished she had given him that.

5\. She’d endured a nearly unbearable conversation with K-2SO to find out, but Cassian loved the music of the roving troubadours of Mon Cala, all reeds and water-drums, and there were still chips you could get if you knew who to ask and K-2 had agreed to play the full fours hours without commentary. She would have made sure the door was locked, so no one could intrude while he listened and she would have waited to be asked to sit next to him, her hand held in both of his.

She would have given him that.

6\. It took the smallest gesture, to slip her talisman around his neck, to let the khyber heated by her blood settle against his heart. The crystal was in the shadow between them when the light came for them, her voice still in his mind, stronger than the Force.

 _Yours_.

She gave him that.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to give presents. A lot. And I like to write about giving gifts. So I came up with five that Jyn never gave Cassian and one that she could have. The title is from a poem by James Russell Lowell, a 19th century American poet. Jobal Naberrie is Padme Amidala's mother and I don't think there's any reason she could not have also been an accomplished poet.


End file.
